1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to data processing systems and in particular to the addition of a hardware component to a running data processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
The desire for higher performance and greater functionality in data processing systems in both the personal and commercial contexts has led the computer industry to continually improve computer systems. Generally, for both commercial and personal computer systems, improvements have focused on providing faster processors, larger upper level caches, larger random access memory (RAM), higher frequency buses, etc.
Additionally, with commercial systems in particular, improvements have also included providing greater processing resources, i.e., rather than replacing existing processors with faster ones, augmenting the total number of processors and linking them together to provide greater overall processing capability. Most current commercial systems are designed with multiple processors in a single system, and many commercial systems are distributed and/or networked systems with multiple individual systems interconnected to each other and sharing the processing workload. Even these “large-scale” commercial systems, however, are frequently upgraded or expanded as customer needs change.
When a data processing system is upgraded or changed, particularly with respect to its internal components, it is often necessary to power the system down before completing the installation. With externally connected I/O components, however, it may be possible to merely plug the component in while the system is powered-up and running. Irrespective of the method utilized to add the component (internally or externally), the system detects or receives an input indicating that additional hardware has been added or simply that a change in the system configuration has occurred. In response, the data processing system will (either automatically or with administrator intervention) initiate a system configuration upgrade and, if necessary, load the required drivers to complete the installation of the new hardware.
With large-scale commercial systems, the upgrade processes can be extremely time intensive, requiring up to several hours to complete in some situations. During that downtime, the customer cannot utilize the data processing system or a portion thereof. The outage is therefore very visible to the customer and may result in substantial financial loss, depending on the industry or specific use of the system. Also, a partial or full reboot of the system may be required to complete the integration of newly installed hardware components into the data processing system.